The Show that Never Ends

All night he worked. He tapped at blurred edges
carefully until the edges were lines
of perfect circles spinning on their sides.
Weary of balance, and still more tired of feeling
the constant tug from the floor, he would have rested,
but the crowd was hungry and he fed them. Girls
swept up the plates that fell and easily cracked,
unbelievers that, prone to the earth's pull,
wobbled and gave in to the facts of physics.

The big cats leaped about him, through the hoop
he held out, ribboned with a wreath of flame
that started from a spark at his wrist. His head
lay like an infant's in the lion's mouth.
And when he conjured with a thriftshop tophat
he was playing God: he sowed thin air
inside the hat with witching seeds that turned
to silk scarves, bouquets, impossible mouths
that drank up water by the glassful.

The man was something with a deck of cards:
He dealt, flipped cards with cards, shuffled
in ways that shocked and stupefied the eyes
like waterfalls, chain lightning, lunar eclipses.
He didn't need the sudden ace of spades,
the queen of hearts tucked in the sucker's pocket:
His every move was a trick, and when he spoke
he buffed each word soft like a hypnotist
so that they never heard the pulse in his breath,
the bangtail gallop thumping in his ribcage.
Even the sweat on his forehead turned to diamonds,
and garnets dribbled from his palms, click, clack.

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